The Secret Life of Bees
by CalmBeforeAStorm
Summary: It takes John a little while to spot Sherlock's obsession with bees, but when he does, he wonders how he could ever have missed it.


**Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs to Moffat, Gatiss and the BBC.**

*…...*

**For so work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom - **_William Shakespeare_

It was only a few weeks after John had first moved in to 221B when he arrived home from Tesco to find his flatmate perched, stock still, on the windowsill of their flat.

He didn't think much of it. After all, Sherlock himself had warned John about his sometimes strange and inexplicable behaviour.

_Sometimes I don't talk for days on end, _he had drawled lazily. _Would that _

_bother you?_

It hadn't bothered John then, and it didn't bother him now. So what if Sherlock wanted to sit stock still on a window ledge, lanky limbs drawn up to his chest, for a few hours?

_Let him get on with it, _John decided, dumping the shopping bags on the well-worn table. As long as the detective was quiet (and not blowing anything up), John didn't care.

But, after a few hours in his room, painstakingly slowly typing up their latest case to his blog, John headed down the stairs for a cup of tea to find Sherlock still sitting where he had left him. The man looked like he hadn't moved a muscle since that morning.

_What the bloody hell is he up to?_

Determined to find out what was holding his flatmate's attention for this amount of time, John crept quietly behind Sherlock and peered over the man's shoulder at the rainy London street below their window, trying to make out any interesting shapes through the sheets of falling rain.

Nothing unusual there, as far as John's well-trained, marksman's eyes could see.

_Then what is he - oh._

Sherlock wasn't actually staring out of the window at all, but rather at the small, furry, gently buzzing creature that was currently sharing the window sill's space with him.

'Is that a bee?' John asked.

He hadn't expected Sherlock to reply, his friend having stayed completely silent and ignored him up to this point, but he did, after a pause.

'Obviously,' he drawled, not taking his gaze off of the insect currently making its way up the glass. ' Apis mellifera, part of the family Apidae, genus Apis. Native to Europe, Asia and Africa, introduced to North America in the 1600's. There's around 28 subspecies-'

Suddenly, Sherlock cut off, perhaps noticing the baffled look on John's face at the barrage of information and scientific words. He turned away again, and even though Sherlock's emotions were hard to read at the best of times (John determinedly believed that they did exist, no matter what Sherlock claimed to the contrary), John sensed that he had hurt Sherlock's feelings in some way.

_Sherlock mustn't be used to people actually listening to him when he's like this, _John realised sadly. _Most people would probably have told him to shut up by now._

'Hey,' John murmured, poking his flatmate gently in the shoulder. 'Don't stop, it's fascinating stuff, really. Just, you may have to dumb it down a bit for me. Idiot, remember?'

Sherlock quirked a small smile at that, then poked John back in the arm.

'It's a honeybee, John'

'Oh' John replied. He paused, then asked 'Why are we watching a honeybee, then?'

Sherlock huffed out a quiet laugh, his breath fogging a faint cloud on the glass. 'Bees are admirable creatures' he answered, as if that explained everything.

'Ehh…, okay. Aren't you going to let it back outside?'

The detective turned his head to look at John, his expression clearly saying _What are you, an idiot?_

'Not in the pouring rain, John,' he muttered, turning back around to once more settle his gaze on the tiny, furry creature. 'I'll let it out when it stops, of course'

'Okay'

John watched the bee with Sherlock for a while. Then he watched Sherlock watch the bee.

Finally, John moved away to make that almost-forgotten cup of tea, not looking at Sherlock again until the rain had stopped and he glanced up to see Sherlock carefully brush the bee out the window, solemn grey eyes following the bee's path towards the sky.

*…...*

After that, John noticed Sherlock's 'bee mania' (as he had taken to calling it in his head), more often.

They were just funny little things, really.

Sherlock, in a sudden blur of blue scarf and greatcoat, rushing forward towards Anderson with a cry of 'Don't kill it!', scooping the almost-flattened bee into a cup and gently whooshing it out of the open window in Scotland Yard. Anderson muttering 'Why not?' under his breath, Donovan's nasty 'Freak!' following soon after.

John and Lestrade, in unison, turning to glare at them both while Sherlock's back was turned away.

Sherlock, later that same day, grimly squishing a wasp with a heavy book, replying with a shrug and a 'They kill bees' to John's unspoken question.

(Sherlock's barely perceptible grin at John's loud guffaw of laughter at this latter incident and his exclamation of 'Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective - exterminator of London's wasps!')

Coming home from the clinic one day to find Sherlock sitting outside on the steps to the flat, gazing sorrowfully at a large, fuzzy, but obviously dying bumblebee as it crawled over his fingers and towards his arm. Gently, almost reverently placing the bee inside of the nearby railings, out of the path of any pedestrian's feet, before casting one last sad look at it and standing up to follow John into the flat.

(John found it ironic that the most emotion he had ever seen Sherlock show was to a dying insect).

John, trying not to laugh as he trotted behind Sherlock in Regent's Park one summer's afternoon, thinking about how they must look to the other visitors to the park. One grown man, at least six feet tall and into his early thirties, wearing Dolce and Gabbana shoes and a Belstaff Milford coat, blindly following a small worker bee as it flew around the park, gathering nectar. Another man, shorter, right behind him, giggling into his hand as he tried to keep up with the other's longer strides.

John, thinking about how surreal his life had become, then deciding that he wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, it would be boring otherwise.

*…...*

A short while after the Hounds of Baskerville case, John texted Mycroft (somewhat guiltily), asking if Sherlock was autistic.

It would certainly explain a lot of his friend's behaviour.

He received an affirmative from Mycroft, who explained that Sherlock had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome when he was very young.

John remembered just a bit about Autism from his medical school days.

Autistics usually had something that they obsessed about, memorized facts and information about. For some it was train timetables, constellations, weather statistics, lines from films or song lyrics.

John didn't even need to text Mycroft about what Sherlock may have obsessed over when he was a kid.

John knew already.

*…...*

Three years later, Sherlock was back from the dead.

John would never, he believed, ever get over the shock of his best friend's return.

It had been exciting, sure, with hit men, bullets, a secret organisation and its equally mysterious leader, a wild trip across Tibet and a mountaineer who turned out to be not quite who he seemed. But they were home now, Moriarty's network was gone, it was over.

And Sherlock was bored.

England was still in an uproar at the great detective's miraculous return, but people were being slow to begin asking Sherlock for his help on cases again.

Sherlock hated it, of course.

John glanced up at Sherlock one day as the man lay upside down on the sofa, his once-again jet-black curls brushing the floor. He looked like he was determined to prove the possibility of dying from sheer boredom and frustration.

John sighed.

'Sherlock, the blood's going to go to your head if keep that up'

No answer.

John almost sighed again, then he stopped, a plan forming in his mind.

'Hey,' he called over, and Sherlock's head turned slightly towards him. 'Want to go to the park to see the bees?'

John laughed out loud as Sherlock twisted himself into a seemingly impossible shape in order to straighten up.

Sherlock looked at him, warily, face almost hidden by his mop of curls.

'Really?'

John grinned at him, feeling a familiar rush of affection for the detective.

'Yeah' he replied. 'Come on'

Sherlock's answering smile almost split his face from ear to ear.

*…...*

**The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams - **_Henry David Thoreau_

A/N: Thanks for reading! (Hope it wasn't as bad as it looks to me…:-))


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